Introduction: The Discovery of Redundancy and the Bone Induction Prerogative of the Three Mammalian Transforming Growth Factor-β Isoforms

Almost 27 years have elapsed since working under the aegis of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, at the Dental Research Institute as a young and growing scientist from Milano University, where I qualied in medicine and surgery, odontostomatology, and maxillofacial surgery. I then reached the pleasant but very complicated and violent shores of the South African continent, where racial battles-unknown to me as a Latin descendant-were ravaging the country and its universities.